WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for A Complete Unknown.

Bob Dylan had a historic and controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in real life and in the new biopic A Complete Unknown changes several true story details about Bob Dylan's real life.

Directed by James Mangold of Ford v. Ferrari and Logan acclaim, A Complete Unknown has one of one of his folk heroes, Woody Guthrie. The 1965 Newport Folk Festival became a pivotal event that changed the course of Dylan's career.

The Newport Folk Festival Crowd Really Did Boo Bob Dylan During His 1965 Performance

Some fans were outraged by Dylan's new loud electric style

As depicted in A Complete Unknown, the crowd at the A Complete Unknown's ending as Dylan refuses to conform to the expectations of the festival even though Pete Seeger tried to level with him on the morning of his performance.

Others speculate that the booing was more due to the poor amplified sound quality that made Dylan's performance uncomfortably loud, which was a stark contrast to the mostly acoustic performances before it. Additionally, as shown in A Complete Unknown, the booing wasn't unanimous among all attendees at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, showing that some spectators enjoyed the new sound or at least were excited to see Dylan in the flesh. Dylan and his band opened with "Maggie's Farm" and "Like a Rolling Stone", followed by "Phantom Engineer", an early version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" before walking off stage to a chorus of cheers and boos.

Pete Seeger Did Want To Cut The Sound To Bob Dylan's Set

He was trying to improve the distorted playback, not kill his electric sound

Another true story detail captured in A Complete Unknown was Pete Seeger's desire to cut Bob Dylan's set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It wasn't, however, an act of disapproval, but more so a response to the distorted playback. In a 1990 letter to Dylan, Seeger wrote: "Bob! Someone just told me that you too think I didn’t like your going electric in 1965. I’ve denied that so many times. I was furious at the distorted sound – no one could understand the words of ‘Maggie’s Farm’." Seeger explains in retrospect that he was trying to improve Dylan's electric sound, not prevent it.

Seeger continued to explain in his letter that he "dashed over to the people controlling the PA system. ‘No, this is the way they want it,’ they said. I shouted, ‘if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable’, and I guess that’s what got quoted. My big mistake was in not challenging from the stage the foolish few who booed. I shoulda said, ‘Howlin Wolf goes electric, why can’t Bob?’ In any case, you keep on. Best, Pete (via Far Out)." It appears that Seeger, who died in 2014, regretted not doing more to endorse Dylan's electric shift at the time.

Bob Dylan Played Two Non-Electric Songs As An Encore

"Mr. Tambourine Man" & "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue”

A Complete Unknown also captures Dylan's acoustic encore at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival to help smooth out the rowdy crowd before his abrupt exit. Dylan returned to the stage solo with an acoustic guitar to play "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Despite the crowd becoming unified and overjoyed, Dylan left after the two-song encore and didn't play at the Newport Folk Festival again until 2002, when he performed a two-hour set in a fake beard and wig several decades after the events of A Complete Unknown.